Matters had now assumed so serious a shape that a detachment of seventy officers and men landed at another point on the island and marched upon the nearest village, laying waste the crops as they advanced.  When the village was reached it was found to be defended by a strong stockade, with a trench inside, from which the crouching natives could fire through loopholes, while outside of the stockade was a deep ditch of water.  Feeling their position impregnable, the savages flourished their weapons and uttered tantalizing whoops at the white men.  The whoops quickly changed when the cabins within the stockade were set on fire by a rocket.  The natives fled, leaving the village to be burned to ashes.  The Americans pushed hostilities so aggressively that on the following day the islanders sued for peace.

The squadron next sailed to the Hawaiian Islands, where several months were spent in exploration.  Then the coast of Oregon was visited and the Peacock suffered wreck at the mouth of the Columbia.  Doubling the Cape of Good Hope, the expedition reached New York in June, 1842, having been gone nearly four years and having sailed more than 30,000 miles.

THE WAR FOR THE UNION.

CHAPTER XXIII.

A New Era for the United States Navy—­Opening of the Great Civil War—­John Lorimer Worden—­Battle Between the Monitor and Merrimac—­Death of Worden.

The War for the Union ushered in a new era for the American navy.  Steam navigation had been fully established some years before.  As all my readers no doubt know, the first successful steamboat in this country was the Clermont, made by Robert Fulton, which ascended the Hudson in the summer of 1807.  The average speed of the pioneer boat was about five miles an hour, so that the trip occupied more than thirty hours.  This great invention was a novelty, and, like many others of a similar nature, it required considerable time for it to come into use.  The first western steamboat was built at Pittsburg in 1811.  It gave an impetus to river navigation by steam, and before long the boats were ploughing the principal streams of the country.  The first steamer to cross the Atlantic was the Savannah, which made the voyage in 1819, but ocean navigation was not fairly begun until 1838, when the Sirius and Great Western made the voyage from England to the United States.  It is a noteworthy fact that one of the greatest of English scientists, after demonstrating that ocean navigation by steam was impossible, was a passenger on the Great Western on her first trip across the Atlantic.